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Desk, monitors, keyboard, mouse, external hard drive, and other things that go on a desk. I'm certainly not going to tear all that down every evening and set it

Desk, monitors, keyboard, mouse, external hard drive, and other things that go on a desk. I'm certainly not going to tear all that down every evening and set it back up every day. Plus a separate office means a door to keep out noise, room for bookshelves and other office items, and the ability to just "put things down" without having to spend time cleaning off the kitchen table before dinner. Any setup other than having a specific office for work is, in my opinion, sub-optimal. Sure, you can make due... but you could make due with a poor environment in an office building too... but why would you? You can't compare the setup in an office building to a much worse environment at home and then say "home is cheaper". For a like-for-like comparison, it costs the employee more to work from home.

Dylan16807 5y ago
> Desk, monitors, keyboard, mouse, external hard drive, and other things that go on a desk. I'm certainly not going to tear all that down every evening and set it back up every day. At worst that's still only a desk of space wasted. And if you're willing to commute, you should probably be willing to spend 2 minutes putting all that stuff away. If you still decide not to, then it's because that space isn't needed very much. > Any setup other than having a specific office for work is, in my opinion, sub-optimal. I agree, but this line of conversation is specifically about if you don't have a separate office.
- RHSeeger 5y ago
  If you don't have a separate office, then odds are you have a sub-optimal work environment. So you're not considering "if you can save money working from home" but rather "if you can save money by working from a worse work environment". Which I guess is a valid argument, it's just somewhat orthogonal to the question of whether or not working from home saves money. > only a desk of space wasted There is a lot more to a dedicated, optimal work environment than "only a desk of space". Plus the fact that a LOT of people live in places that don't have an extra "desk of space". Approximately half the places I've worked couldn't give up a desk's worth of space without it being in everyone's way.
- tshaddox 5y ago
  That’s still aligned with my point. Either you pay rent for an additional separate office (lots of money), or you reduce your existing living space to make room for work stuff. The only case where you don’t notice is this is when you just so happened to already have completely unused living space that you don’t mind filling up with work stuff, or you just so happened to have an office setup at home that overlaps perfectly with what you need for work.
  - Dylan16807 5y ago
    > That’s still aligned with my point. Either you pay rent for an additional separate office (lots of money), or you reduce your existing living space to make room for work stuff. Yes, but the reduction for a desk is only if you don't have another usable surface, and even then it's only a tenth of "lots of money" because a desk is so much smaller than a room. A tenth of lots of money is not all that much, and very likely cheaper than commuting.
    - RHSeeger 5y ago
      I think part of the disconnect is that (it appears that) for you, a suitable work from home environment is - a 2'x3' area on a table, anywhere in the place you live For a lot of us (at least for me and some others), a suitable work from home environment includes - a 4'x3' desk (or larger, for multiple monitors) - a door or other way to separate the workspace from house interruptions (and vice versa) - a bookshelf and other miscellaneous items - good lighting In general, all that ^ is necessary to be as effective as one would be at an actual office, and generally means a separate room in the house/apartment; and that is fairly costly. The last time I did the calculations, it came out to several thousands of dollars per year.
      - Dylan16807 5y ago
        All of that except the door is easy to do at low cost. Whether you can get a nice isolated place depends on the particular place you're living. But I was never arguing that isolation isn't necessary! Please look again at the initial comment I replied to. "Either you paid for more space or you lost space at your home during the 8 hours you were previously working at an office." My concern was only with the second half of that "or". To get to the second half of the "or", you have to take it as given that there's a suitable spot in your home. When you argue that many homes don't already have such a spot, I agree, but that's irrelevant to what I was trying to comment on. Everything I've said here should be interpreted like this: "Okay, so you've decided you don't need an additional room? Well in that case, I don't think the space taken up by working from home in an existing room is a big deal, because xyz."

Dylan16807 5y ago

> Desk, monitors, keyboard, mouse, external hard drive, and other things that go on a desk. I'm certainly not going to tear all that down every evening and set it back up every day. At worst that's still only a desk of space wasted. And if you're willing to commute, you should probably be willing to spend 2 minutes putting all that stuff away. If you still decide not to, then it's because that space isn't needed very much. > Any setup other than having a specific office for work is, in my opinion, sub-optimal. I agree, but this line of conversation is specifically about if you don't have a separate office.

RHSeeger 5y ago
If you don't have a separate office, then odds are you have a sub-optimal work environment. So you're not considering "if you can save money working from home" but rather "if you can save money by working from a worse work environment". Which I guess is a valid argument, it's just somewhat orthogonal to the question of whether or not working from home saves money. > only a desk of space wasted There is a lot more to a dedicated, optimal work environment than "only a desk of space". Plus the fact that a LOT of people live in places that don't have an extra "desk of space". Approximately half the places I've worked couldn't give up a desk's worth of space without it being in everyone's way.
tshaddox 5y ago
That’s still aligned with my point. Either you pay rent for an additional separate office (lots of money), or you reduce your existing living space to make room for work stuff. The only case where you don’t notice is this is when you just so happened to already have completely unused living space that you don’t mind filling up with work stuff, or you just so happened to have an office setup at home that overlaps perfectly with what you need for work.
- Dylan16807 5y ago
  > That’s still aligned with my point. Either you pay rent for an additional separate office (lots of money), or you reduce your existing living space to make room for work stuff. Yes, but the reduction for a desk is only if you don't have another usable surface, and even then it's only a tenth of "lots of money" because a desk is so much smaller than a room. A tenth of lots of money is not all that much, and very likely cheaper than commuting.
  - RHSeeger 5y ago
    I think part of the disconnect is that (it appears that) for you, a suitable work from home environment is - a 2'x3' area on a table, anywhere in the place you live For a lot of us (at least for me and some others), a suitable work from home environment includes - a 4'x3' desk (or larger, for multiple monitors) - a door or other way to separate the workspace from house interruptions (and vice versa) - a bookshelf and other miscellaneous items - good lighting In general, all that ^ is necessary to be as effective as one would be at an actual office, and generally means a separate room in the house/apartment; and that is fairly costly. The last time I did the calculations, it came out to several thousands of dollars per year.
    - Dylan16807 5y ago
      All of that except the door is easy to do at low cost. Whether you can get a nice isolated place depends on the particular place you're living. But I was never arguing that isolation isn't necessary! Please look again at the initial comment I replied to. "Either you paid for more space or you lost space at your home during the 8 hours you were previously working at an office." My concern was only with the second half of that "or". To get to the second half of the "or", you have to take it as given that there's a suitable spot in your home. When you argue that many homes don't already have such a spot, I agree, but that's irrelevant to what I was trying to comment on. Everything I've said here should be interpreted like this: "Okay, so you've decided you don't need an additional room? Well in that case, I don't think the space taken up by working from home in an existing room is a big deal, because xyz."